"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Edmund Burke

September 01, 2008

I think that Western leaders have to take into account the fact that their own people are also not always rational, and this impacts on what is considered to be in the national interest.
In short, and especially when you have a democracy, you cannot divorce the perceived national interest from a people's culture and as [has been] remarked, culture will out.

I think that we are in a strange transitional phase where what you say holds. I do not however consider this phase to be stable or sustainable. The ability of the West to act as a rational society is deteriorating. On the other hand, the West is the one society, or family of societies where rationality was a bedrock of culture, and informed national interest. One thing we may agree on is that the West ain't what it used to be, and that this view holds with increasing velocity. The culture of the West is changing rapidly, and the Westerner of today has precious little in common with their grandparents.

This change is not guaranteed to lead to a sustainable, secure society. Further, I am of the opinion that the state space of possible societies contains precious few stable, free, secure, prosperous societies. So any runaway trajectory is not likely to take you to a good place. Kind of like sailing in a random direction and hoping to find Moby Dick. So, either we will develop radically new instituations, tools and legislation, or the West will go the way of the dinosaurs.

August 28, 2008

Russian leaders are seldom guided by much more than sheer cold brutal expediency. They do however have to work with political support from a less than rational people.

The same is true of the Pakis.

And far less true of the Norks.

As for the Russians not making sense:

In geopolitics pride and anger are justifications, almost never core reasons for action.

Russia's core strategic assets are being threatened and key agreements made in the early Yeltsin years are trampled on. Russia's sovereignty, security, ethnic groups abroad and key economic assets are all under threat as of the Orange Mistake of 2005.

The significance of Georgia, and particularly the Ukraine to key Russian interests should not be underestimated.
To take Russia to task for having these interests is to take the Euroweenie pacifist "end of history" perspective, which is paradoxically what the West has been doing these past few weeks. It is also to ignore that the US has the Monroe Doctrine, and Australia has its own "near abroad" in the Pacific Islands, where we play Big Daddy, and rightly so. And not always with the poor little fuzzy wuzzy's interests at heart, as in the case of Timor Sea oil negotiations. And rightly so again.

Now one may still say that there is reason to pressure or cripple Russia, either for a better deal on other geopolitical matters, or for the endgame of depriving them of their nukes. But even then it serves us little to pretend that Russia does not have serious interests driving its actions.

August 21, 2008

Spengler's article focused on the misalignment between the West's perception of Russia's existential threats, and Russia's own assessment.

It would pay to consider another misalignment of Western perceptions: those of its own existential threats. The US is fixated solidly on the Russian nuclear arsenal (if they are being at all rational, that is).

But there is Islam. There is Pakistan and Iran. There is Syria. There is China. There is a resurgent Latin American "Bolivarian" socialism.
They could all use a friend.

This is not all, however. We also need to consider another asymmetry. Russia is solidly behind their government's aggressive policies, and would support far more aggression in the future. The first observation to make here is that Russians would be equally supportive of any decisive action against Islamism in their neighbourhood. What a waste..

The more important observation, is that effectively there is no "West" in any meaningful, strategic sense. There is no alignment of interests, common threat assessment or unity of action. Indeed, Russia is right now negotiating a separate security arrangement with Germany. What does this do to NATO ? Italy and France are trying to put the brakes on an NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, and the NATO reaction to the Estonian cyber-war was an interesting foretaste of likely "touch one, touch all" bluster from a NATO that in the end cannot be bothered.

So no Rubicon has been crossed. Caesar is going to win again, at least in the short term. Indeed, his sticky end is pre-ordained this time
around too, the Senate's daggers replaced with Spengler's demographics.

The best part of all is that there is a best part. Much good is going to come of a Europe bordering on the insane in its pacifism, left wing
nuttery and anti-americanism realising that the wolf is at the door, that European solidarity is as bogus as the notion of soft power, and
that that the wolf (Bear ?) has his paws on the gas taps during a winter that says more about failing sunspots than it does about global warming. Time they learned.

I agree completely with Spengler and have been saying for years that "the Orange Mistake" would gain the West nothing, while turning a valuable ally in the Long War into an implacable and tenacious enemy.

July 21, 2008

Extremists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of Britain's young Muslims, a disturbing police report warns.

The money shot:

Bringing people through faster might be a way of trying to limit the risks of detection prior to going operational. So whereas previously the al-Qa'eda network challenged state security services through using a small select cadre of skilled operatives, they might equally stretch capacity by mounting a larger number of less sophisticated attacks.

Police and councils have been told to avoid putting some Islamic extremists through the criminal justice system. Members of extremist groups have have not “clearly” committed a crime would receive therapy and counselling under new Government plans to “deradicalise” religious fanatics.

Italy's far-right, anti-immigrant Northern League party has started its mission in the new government with bringing down a mosque in the northern city of Verona. Bulldozers brought down last week a building housing a Muslim prayer room in the city..."I never felt at ease with this mosque," Elisonder Antonneli, the head of Verona city council, said. "This place will be turned into a park and a car parking space and will be named after (Italian writer) Oriana Fallaci."

February 27, 2008

It is not enough to say that we, the West, Jews and the Hebraically Challenged alike, have learned nothing from the Holocaust. If only that were that true. Were it so, would not have created monsters like this.